What is exports and prototype in Javascript?

Question

I am new to Javascript and am seeing a lot of usage of exports and prototype in the code that I read. What are they mainly used for and how do they work?

//from express var Server = exports = module.exports = function HTTPSServer(options, middleware){   connect.HTTPSServer.call(this, options, []);   this.init(middleware); };  Server.prototype.__proto__ = connect.HTTPSServer.prototype; 

Answer 1

Exports is used to make parts of your module available to scripts outside the module. So when someone uses require like below in another script:

var sys = require("sys");   

They can access any functions or properties you put in module.exports

The easiest way to understand prototype in your example is that Server is a class that inherits all of the methods of HTTPSServer. prototype is one way to achieve class inheritance in javascript.